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Intervals

Questions Concerning Grief

By MutationistPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 5 min read
Third Place in SFS 8: Pear Tree Challenge
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In the kitchen, I heard your mother sob into the dishes, soapy tears began to run down the drain after the evening’s chores were finally complete. She's spent this last week with the same hollow air that the winter breeze whispers in the dead of night. I swear I can hear her bones as she moves from room to room, so fragile and disassociated. She looks to me often, eyes wet and red with grief, challenging me to offer her comfort. I find this intimacy with someone so unhinged truly frightens me.

I remain silent on the couch as she passes and pretend to look at my hands. It's within these moments I realize pieces of the heart go missing and do not return for sometime, if not ever. She soaks in her sorrows, and whilst I find my eyes dry, I can’t help but sense my own bitterness and jealousy in her capability to be so vulnerable.

There was once a time that the hills out on Quail Road bloomed blossoms of love. Acres of green expanse that seemed infinite beckoned us to run and sang songs of long forgotten heat. This is the time in which I choose to remember you most. I recall your laugh being carried into the vast summer sky, booming and reverberating off into the ether when we tried to catch dandelions mid-air. This interval of time, those long summer days in late June are now where you live, eternally.

I am forced to face a brand new world without you, and in this world I ask myself how long until this pang of longing in my belly ceases? How long until reflections in windowpanes no longer serve as a painful reminder of change? I don’t have the understanding to formulate answers to such formidable questions. I do know this: while I yearn for the day when suffering closes out into a melancholy, I also am greeted by the fear that I will no longer remember the slope of your nose, the color of small galaxies in your eyes, and the way you would say my name; so tender and soft. I am fearful that I will forget what waking up beside you in the middle of the day looked like; sunshine peering through one misshapen blind and hitting you gold on the shoulder as you silently slept. Even in these memories I am reminded that this interval of life will soon come to pass, I am plagued with cherishing and yet heaving over every intrusive thought that travels through my mind.

Tomorrow we give you back to the dirt. We send you out onto those acres, free to frolic in the forever Summer. It was only fitting we relinquish you to the pear tree, for it was there you spoke of life, death, and all things that have passed and not yet come.

It was there we spent evenings reading Ginsberg, screaming obscenities of love and unattainable promise out at the trees. It was there you told me of the rifle in the barn, of the sweetest song you’d ever heard, and the first time you realized that everything that was going to happen inevitably will, and that we have little effect over this short life. I choke on those words now, mind you. Did you know what was going to happen when you told me such things? Was there some secret reassurance you were looking to provide me with? As I unravel I ponder about such coincidences or apparent fate.

I now sit in the pub and contemplate this all. I went all the way across town, I’m afraid to run into anyone that wishes to give me another condolence. In this new atmosphere I am surrounded by gaudy decorations, overly-friendly bartenders, 9-5 office workers blowing off steam and complaining about their boss. You’d hate it. I chuckle silently to myself, for I hate it too.

I wonder how tired I must become in order to establish some semblance of rest. I still feel I must dutifully reflect to the rest of the world, how can so many people approach such tremendous pain? Is it truly a unique experience, or perhaps bullet points shared and understood amongst strangers? If so, then why does this all feel so personal? I take rigid breaths and look around this small room, indifferent of the bar games being played, unaffected by the drunken singing of classic songs, empty in a space so filled.

Everything radiates with such a nothingness I am unintentionally yielding to. Everything, meaningless, and yet, I remember that if you were here, you’d shake me and remind me that these moments of nothing are absolutely everything; this is where it all happens. Their voices are getting louder, but I drown out further, proceed deeply inward. I catch teardrops I can no longer deny into my whiskey. I’ve written all this down on the pub’s napkin. Do I drop it in your coffin come sunrise?

Do you remember the Wild Turkey we’d take to the fields? Were we drunk from love or just drunk? I can gather an answer to that one. I have never found such a profound romance or depth with anyone else. I now struggle with the notion of finding that again. I don’t believe it. Never. I bet wherever you are you believe that I am too amorous of a soul to not. But I can only hear your voice, smell that tall grass, taste those ripe pears in the midsummer. I remember that’s where your body will be forever, come sunset tomorrow.

What do you think I should do? I order another tall whiskey as though you silently nodded to me for another round. I hate that it is only when misplaced in front of strangers that I’m able to access this level of inexplicable feeling. I consider that maybe I’m cursed to only really experience everything after the fact. How does one truly live in that realm, and that realm alone? I live to only experience later, and ultimately forget. Is this curse for everyone? I look around the small room and recognize that it might just be me. My time with you feels like something I am trying terribly to grip but am ultimately unable to get a complete hold of, perpetually slipping away and slipping away. I never thought you’d leave me so soon.

I am aching with the pain of missing you and the notion that I will one day forget the current of memories rushing to me, at a time when I am surrounded by nothing, everything and numb.

In the morning I’ll leave my mementos with you as you begin your journey into the after. I’ll face the dawn, after another night of sleepless exhaustion.

I wish us both luck, as we begin this next interval of life apart.

humanity
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About the Creator

Mutationist

Funny girl writes sad things to ease the existential dread.

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